Planning
Materials:
Paint brushes- I did not know what shape brushes would work best for this piece so I gathered all of them. I wanted to buy smaller brushes so that I could paint tiny details but I also wanted to see what I could accomplish with the brushes I already have. Acrylic Retarder- I have used this material before and knew that it would become useful for this project. Retarder elongates the amount of time the acrylic paint will dry which is good for blending and color correcting. Acrylic Paint- The brand I bought was Utrecht which I like because of how thick the paint is. This would be important because it could reduce the amount of times I would have to reapply thin spots of paint. |
Process
The first image is showing my beginning thought process on the best ratios of hues to titanium white. Once I felt confident in making the ideal blue to white ratio, I noticed that there were some spots on the canvas that did not have this bluish tint in the highlights. I knew that it was a similar color so I made a gradation of shades of purple (shown in the image to the left). I did not have purple paint so I also had to experiment with mixing red and blue. I thought this would be easy but I always ended up adjusting the ratio because I would also add to much blue, forgetting how it over-powers color solutions.
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I made these gradation scales because when I first started this project, I was unsure about what colors would make the best shades of brown. In this piece, there are multiple browns with slightly different tints so I knew it would be smart to start finding that before painting. The top gradation scale uses gold that fades into white to the left and brown to the right. I thought this was great for building that brown color while having undertones of yellow but the one
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problem I had was the gold left a metallic effect even after diluted with dark brown. I liked the second scale with yellow and brown but I found out when I was painting that the yellow needed white before mixing with brown. Without doing this, the color had hints of green because the dark brown must have had a blue base that was mixing with the yellow.
The bottom gradation scale is a mixture of black and brown. I made this scale before I started the piece so I thought these darker colors would be used where the painting shows shadows but I never did. I only used the raw umber brown without any mixture because the brown itself appeared black when put on canvas.
The bottom gradation scale is a mixture of black and brown. I made this scale before I started the piece so I thought these darker colors would be used where the painting shows shadows but I never did. I only used the raw umber brown without any mixture because the brown itself appeared black when put on canvas.
Reflection
I like the outcome of my piece but I would definitely go back and redo the process to make it easier for myself. I started off by using colors that were too similar to one another so the painting looked blended which was not the technical skill needed for this artwork. I was able to fix this towards the end when I was working on layering the translucent paint areas and it was something that I was able to easily recognize. I had a good understanding of building the colors from the start of the project. The easiest part of the project was that most of the time if the undertones were not yellow they were blue so once I saw that relationship I could start forming the colors I needed. A big struggle for me was trying to go over the thin paint spots to cover the canvas and the line marks from my original sketch. The reason this was such a large issue for me was because as soon as I would have to cover an area, the color match that I had made was not completely accurate so I had to repeat the process again with the new color. This went on many different times within my piece and in varying areas. Another reason why a lot of my paint was transparent on the canvas was because of my use of acrylic retarder. I have used it before but I do not have as much practice using it as I would like to have. I knew that the smallest drop of retarder would alter the viscosity of the paint but I also knew that it would help delay the drying process. Once I found the perfect amount it made the painting go by a lot quicker but since I did not know how to do it in the beginning, I had to fix all of those mistakes. I am proud with how I started developing the skills and technique to help my painting rather than hurt it.